Crime, economic growth key areas of focus for new PSOJ head
Published:Wednesday | December 28, 2022 | 12:05 AMChistopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
Newly installed Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) President Metry Seaga has indicated that finding solutions for crime and concrete measures to grow the economy will be among the big-ticket items for his administration.
Seaga, who succeeded Keith Duncan on December 15, told The Gleaner that the two areas of concern are inextricably linked.
“Our economy is really ripe for an economic zone-type arrangement. We need to build our economy around special economic zones and where we are placed in the Americas is so critical,” he noted. “We need to start bringing products in and adding value there. So I am looking at mergers and acquisitions with local companies, so that we can have transfer of knowledge, so that we can do what needs to be done to grow our economy because a lot of the issues that we have are stemming from the fact that we don’t have a big economy.”
Continued Seaga: “We have 11,000 police and we need 18,000, but we fighting because we can’t pay them any more because the wage bill is too high. So we trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and we can’t so do until we grow our economy and we can’t grow our economy selling goods and services to three million people. We have to increase the size of our economy by expanding outside of our shores, and that, to me, is one of the main things.”
Seaga noted that having done the hard work in terms of achieving fiscal stability, the groundwork has been established for achieving economic growth.
“That’s one of the main things that I am going to be speaking with the minister of finance about – how we get that growth and development, and the truth is, it has started. It’s now for us to make that a reality,” he told The Gleaner.
The new PSOJ boss is also defending the body’s stance in supporting the use of states of emergency as a crime-fighting measure. He dismissed suggestions that such an action was political.
“I am not about playing political football with anything, much less crime. Crime is too important an issue for our country and the people of our country to be playing political football with. I have met with my council and the person who is in charge of that section of things for the PSOJ, Mr George Overton, and we – the council and, by extension, I – believe that at this point, we are working closely together to find solutions that bring everybody together to the table,” he told The Gleaner.
“ ... Until we find something that is better, then we gonna have to continue to support it.”